New “Solution” to GERD Will Shock You

Are Big Pharma’s heartburn drugs making your GERD worse and worse? Now doctors want to cut open your throat and install a metal ring of magnets, when the best and safest remedies are all natural and cost only pennies!

Conventional medicine’s “solution”

Much of the current thinking about heartburn centers around the idea that one’s lower esophageal sphincter (LES) is defective—which leads to its not shutting properly—allowing stomach acid to flow back into the esophagus and burn the esophageal lining. So researchers have invented a procedure in which an expandable metal ring of titanium beads with magnetic cores is clipped onto the bottom of the esophagus. The ring of magnets pull inward to close the esophagus but can expand to allow food to pass downward.

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a study showing that 86% of patients with GERD who had the metal ring implanted no longer used heartburn medicine one year after the implant. Over three years, most patients showed lower acid levels in their esophagus, and patients who continued taking heartburn medication were able to lower their doses.

There were some downsides, however: six patients experienced pain, vomiting, and difficulty swallowing, and ultimately had the device removed. Two-thirds of all who received the implant reported difficulty swallowing, though this fell to 11% after one year, and 4% after three years.

The questionable side of the study

The study was far from ideal. The researchers excluded everyone who was obese, and everyone who had advanced inflammation of the esophagus or a large hiatal hernia (a bulge, which is associated with GERD). In other words, they didn’t even study the very populations who need a treatment for GERD the most.

We would also note a rather telling irony: the study was not a random controlled trial (RCT), which is mainstream medicine’s idea of the “gold standard.” Even so, the results are being announced as if it were a great triumph. When it comes to natural treatments, one of conventional medicine’s main critiques is that no RCTs have been done, even though the critics know the expense is too great for non-patentable supplements!

This is not the first time surgery has been suggested as a treatment for GERD. Last year we told you that surgeons were trying to seal the valve with sutures.

Mainstream medical treatment for GERD and heartburn has up to now been to use drugs to decrease stomach acidity, either by neutralizing stomach acid (antacids) or shutting down the stomach’s ability to produce acid through proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). The study is quick to say this new surgery is a way to get patients off stomach acid drugs.

It may be they’re finally acknowledging that the popular acid blockers, the PPIs in particular, are dangerous. They have a number of highly undesirable side effects, as documented by academic research, including reduced calcium absorption (which is associated with an increased risk of bone fractures in women); reduced absorption of other critical minerals and nutrients; an increased risk of vomiting and diarrhea; an increased risk of pneumonia (because an acid-free stomach lets pathogens into our body); and an increased risk of dementia in elderly African Americans and probably in others.

An article published in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery also showed that these medications increase bile reflux and that this bile reflux is particularly dangerous for the throat. Other drugs can also increase your risk for reflux and throat cancer, including pain relievers (NSAIDS) and bone medications called bisphosphonates (e.g., Fosamax), as integrative physician Dr. Frank Shallenberger points out in his publication “Stop the Stomach Torture.”

Feeding the vicious cycle

Common sense tells us that acid is in our stomachs for a reason. We need it for digestion. Moreover, acid production declines, sometimes sharply, with age, while stomach problems including GERD increase sharply with age. If stomach problems are more often associated with declining acid production, how can completely shutting off acid production improve the situation? In time, we will look back on the almost promiscuous use of acid-blocking drugs, among the drug industry’s biggest sellers, as one of modern medicine’s most colossal and inexcusable errors.

Neither the drugs nor the surgery address the question of why people have a “defective LES” in the first place. Most likely, it’s a simple case of needing more stomach acid, not less, in order to keep the valve shut. If there is enough acid in the stomach, the stomach probably signals the valve to shut. If there isn’t enough acid, this won’t happen.

As we noted last year, the lack of acid in the stomach, where it is meant to be, means that the stomach may fail to signal the pyloric valve at the top of the stomach to close when you are digesting food. Failure to close may also be linked to an overgrowth of helicobacter bugs (associated with ulcers) which do not like acid and are able to reduce your stomach acid production.

In some people, it could also be caused or exacerbated by food allergies and sensitivities, or by too much caffeine, alcohol, nicotine consumption, or other drugs, as mentioned above.

In other words, the very drugs being prescribed by conventional medicine could be offering temporary relief but at the cost of exacerbating the problem over the long term. Why do they even provide temporary relief? Because when the stomach lacks the acid and enzymes released by the acid needed for digestion, it falls back on a secondary mechanism of fermentation. This works to get the food through but creates gas and discomfort. The acid blockers probably make you feel better by temporarily stopping the fermentation.

Bottom line: promoting an invasive and unreliable surgical throat ring is not exactly a solution for a problem probably caused in the first place by acid-blocking drugs.

Alternative remedies for GERD will vary, of course, depending on each individual’s symptoms. You’ll need to see an integrative physician, but their recommendations may include:

D-limonene, an extract from the orange peel. Evidence suggests it provides a barrier in the stomach and esophagus against bacterial infection and may reduce the amount of gastric juices that reflux into the esophagus;

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One response to “New “Solution” to GERD Will Shock You”

i have had many troubles….and this one i have solved. acid reflux is combination of two things but mainly just one………………bowels moving too slowly to empty and being forced to receive more food……… the answer has been to take care of constipation and to not eat as much at one sitting…….ie more veggies and fruits in the diet and less heavy foods like potatos rice and bread……. if your guts are moving properly, the acid goes no where but down, as it was designed…… over eating combined with slow bowel movement will get me every time…….its just a matter of watching yourself and you can see this happen and test it by eating right to get the digestive system to flow normally………..no other remedy is needed….. the constant upward pressure of stomach contents comes from the digestive system trying to move down and it cannot , so it seeks another way to move………..and that is up…..this begins to weaken the esophageal valve by constant exertion against it… it is so simple but took me years to figure it out. Still have a few occasions in a years time of high stress when i havent eaten right like i should and all it takes is lemon juice to neutralize it at the time, and then going back to taking care of my digestive system again so it can work as designed to work…..the simplicity of the answer is amazing…. not rocket science after all.

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